This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. This month marks the centennial of the

birth of legendary record producer Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis and produced his first records,

which many consider Elvis's best. Phillips also founded Sun Records and launched the careers of

Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Charlie Rich. Elvis's biographer Peter

Giralnik said that Phillips left a remarkable legacy, both of Black Blues and the white adaptation of it,

which became Rock and Roll. Sam Phillips sold Sun Records in 1969. We're going to listen to Terry's

1997 interview with him. Let's begin with one of the first records Phillips produced in his Memphis

studio, the 1951 recording many critics consider the first Rock and Roll record, Rocket 88, featuring

singer Jackie Branson with Ike Turner at the piano.

You went me to the world until I was born, you heard the noise they make, but let me

re-induced my new Rocket 88. It's great, just one way. Everybody likes my Rocket 88.

Baby will ride and style, pull it all along.

Part of your genius has been finding musicians who brought together Black music and country music,

creating Rock and Roll and Rock Abilly, I'm wondering how you were exposed to Black music as a

white man growing up in the segregated South. My interest in Black music started at a very early age.

I worked with Black people in the fields. My daddy was a farmer and he grew cotton and

of course cotton had to be picked and hoed. My father incidentally did not own the farm. He was

a tenant farmer and he in turn would bring other people onto the farm to help them.

We were able to be together and awful lot with Black people because of the closeness of

the type of work that we had to do on the farms. You started your producing career

recording blues musicians and leasing the records to companies like RPM, Modern and Chess Records.

You recorded Helen Wolf, Walter Horton, Bobby Blan, Little Junior Parker, BB King,

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